Rita Will

by Rita Mae Brown

  Finally, she hopped on the bus in York Square. I made myself exceedingly popular by announcing that Jesus had been crucified and then crying all the way home. Even the promise of an ice cream sundae couldn’t quiet me. Poor Mom, worn out from apologizing to the bus passengers, was bedraggled by the time she pushed open the back screen door of our house.

  I knew you died only once. We lived out in the country. I’d seen chickens die, and no dead chicken ever got up and walked. How could Jesus do it?

  Mother implored me to stop crying. Sunday morning I would rejoice, she promised, for Christ would rise from the dead.

  The phone lines hummed in Hanover, Littlestown and York. My Good Friday performance aroused the natives. Mother bore criticism for taking such a little child to a frightening service. She should have known better. Of course, there would follow an exhaustive discussion of Julia Ellen Buckingham Brown, the original flapper.

  Others felt that I was a sensitive child.

  A few felt I must have been touched at an early age by a religious calling. Aunt Mimi secretly hoped I’d find the One True Faith, natch, and become a nun. Not just any nun, mind you, but a Dominican. Aunt Mimi had a thing for Dominicans.

  Mother Brown was, of course, appalled.

  Dad worried that I cried so much I’d make myself sick.

  I couldn’t have known it at the time, but this incident showed me how people respond differently to an event. People look out the same window but do not see the same tree.

  Well, the big day came. I attended the Easter service in my finery. I had been instructed by Mother, Aunt Mimi and even Big Mimi about my deportment.

  I was perfect. Everyone made a point of speaking to Mother and to me after the service, which was a riot of color, rejoicing and flower arrangements as big as hippopotami. This was my first taste of conscious celebrity. I didn’t much mind it.

  However, I wanted to know when I would rise from the dead. Poor Mom!

  4

  Hambone

  Big Mimi loved to hambone. She’d sit on her porch, tap her foot, slap her knees, then slap her arms, then clap and slap her arms again. All the Buckinghams were musical, and although Big Mimi was a Rill—she had only married a Buckingham—she was musical, too.

  Poor as a church mouse, she couldn’t afford a piano. She never complained. Far from it. My grandmother was the happiest woman I’ve ever known. She’d seen three of her five children grow to maturity, marry and have healthy families. Her children materially improved their lives and bought her whatever she needed. In her late fifties, when I was small, she said she didn’t need anything.

  She sang to me, taught me dance steps, taught me the difference between a Black-and-Tan Coonhound, a Bluetick Coonhound and a Walker Foxhound and said the best horses were to be found at Hanover Shoe Farm. I loved horses, cats and dogs beyond reason. I couldn’t learn enough about them. When Mom took us down into Hanover, Big Mimi would walk me around the main barns at Hanover Shoe Farm. Mother had a fine eye for horseflesh, too. It was the wagering part of racing that attracted her. This gambling urge of Mother’s would prove especially interesting later.

  We greeted friends, looked at stallions and mares, falling in love with every frolicsome foal. I didn’t know it, but everyone on the great estate knew exactly who I was. Every now and then I’d overhear a comment such as “She has her mother’s eyes. Other than that she doesn’t look like a Young at all.” Or the more cloying “Why, she looks like you, Juts.” I didn’t look at all like Juts, the five-foot-two fireball with a figure men admired openly. I didn’t even know I was supposed to look like Mom or Dad. They were Mom and Dad, that was all I knew.

  Big Mimi, unlike Mother Brown, suffered these hints and raised eyebrows with her usual blend of sweetness and good humor. She protected me as best she could and taught me as much as she could in the short time we were to be together.

  She died without warning of a heart attack in the spring of 1947.

  When Mother heard the news she ran up to my bedroom under the eaves. I was playing with Mickey.

  She said, “Big Mimi is an angel now,” tears rolling down her cheeks. She threw open the window and shouted to the meadows, “My mother is dead.” Scared the hell out of me.

  The funeral brought folks from as far away as Baltimore and Harrisburg. Many roads weren’t paved, being winding two-lane affairs. The fact that so many people took the trouble said something about Mimi Buckingham’s effect on them.

  The open casket was raised, and flowers were massed everywhere. I tried to crawl into the casket because I wanted to kiss her. When Dad prevented me from pulling down the flowers, I then danced because I knew that would have made Big Mimi laugh. This proved too much for many of the mourners, and everyone burst into sobs. Dad, crying too, walked me outside.

  Since Big Mimi was with Jesus, I expected everyone to be happy. I knew she was dead and yet I didn’t exactly get it. She was Big Mimi. She was a fountain of light, laughter and uncommon good sense. Other creatures and people might die, but couldn’t Jesus send her back? We needed her.

  “It doesn’t work that way, honey.”

  I was figuring out that the Resurrection applied to only one of us.

  I still miss her. In our short time together she gave me many gifts, chief of which is “hound sense.” So in addition to my “catitude” I could now communicate with dogs.

  I can make friends, animal or human, anywhere. But the best friends come on four feet.

  5

  Death to Crinolines

  If you’ve never worn crinolines on a hot, humid day, you’ve missed out on a torture that separates the goats from the sheep or the trash from the ladies.

  Mother and Aunt Mimi devoured Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue as well as those journals of deep intellect. Silver Screen and Movie Stars. Born at the turn of the century, they were galvanized by clothes and movies. In Mother’s youth, which actually never ended (even in her seventh decade, she flashed about like a silent-film star), she carried a parasol and wore hats large enough for an eagle to nest in, long white dresses with high collars, and a ribbon with a cameo around the collar.

  Aunt Mimi, a look-alike for Mabel Normand, the greatest film comedienne of all time, flounced around in darker clothes than Mom, with a pinched-in waist to show off her beautiful figure.

  By the time I waltzed onto this earth, the girls adored Bette Davis, Greer Garson, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Jean Arthur. Shoulder pads filled out everything from short-sleeved camp shirts to flowing winter coats. Shoes, hat, gloves and bag were dyed to match except in hot, sticky summer, when Mom dashed about in gathered skirts, a crisp blouse and espadrilles.

  I was tarted up and paraded around. Not only was Juts fanatical about my attire, so was Aunt Mimi. By the age of four I’d probably tried on more clothes than Linda Evangelista.

  What I wanted was a pair of jeans and cowboy boots or high-top sneakers. Aunt Mimi had a fit of the vapors when I mentioned this. Mother, always of broader mind than her sister, nixed it with a breezy “Field hands wear jeans.”

  “Never forget that you’re a lady,” Mimi toned, “of quality.”

  “I want jeans.”

  One Friday we passed the dry-goods store just off the square. Friday was market and shopping day. Mother allowed me to zip in and she followed. Aunt Mimi prowled on the sidewalk and then, with a great show of displeasure, trudged in.

  I snatched a pair of Levi’s off the counter. Mother and I discussed this fully. She told me to keep my voice down.

  To shut me up, she asked the clerk the cost of the jeans.

  “Three dollars.”

  “Robbery!” Aunt Mimi’s voice could have cracked glass.

  The clerk considered that, then said he must have made a mistake because I’d be wearing children’s size. The price dropped.

  “You aren’t going to give in to her. Juts? It will never end. Give a child an inch and they’ll take a mile.”

  Actually, Mother wouldn’t have boug
ht me those jeans if her beloved older sister hadn’t felt compelled to behave like an older sister. She smacked those jeans on the counter and paid up.

  I was ecstatic.

  Sis chewed Mother’s ear the whole way home.

  In a small town sound travels faster than light. By the time we got home. Mother Brown called and announced I would not be wearing jeans in her house, thank you.

  Mother kept her temper but when she put the receiver back in the cradle she said, “Lardass.” She lit her ever-present Chesterfield and dropped into her thinking chair. I used to believe the chair really thought.

  “Mom, can I put on my jeans?”

  “Yes, and be quick about it.”

  I reappeared. Mom rolled up the pants legs, and whoosh, we trotted out of the house. Mother marched me to the downtown market. Central Market, where we both smiled at spiteful comments about the Browns’ little boy.

  On the way home I said, “I thought you didn’t want me to wear jeans.”

  A long pause followed. Mother excelled at meaningful silences, followed by an exhalation of smoke and a burst of chat. “I changed my mind.”

  “Oh.”

  When we disembarked from the bus at the top of Queen Street Hill and walked down what is now called Hillcrest Road, she grabbed my hand, swinging it back and forth as we walked.

  “I can’t stand some jackass telling me what to do.”

  “You mean Mamaw?”

  “I mean the whole goddamn world. I’m doing what I want to do, when I want to do it.” Profanity peppered Mother’s conversations, although she usually denied swearing.

  “You gonna wear jeans, Momma?”

  “I most certainly am not, but if you want to wear them, go to it, kiddo.”

  That pair of jeans taught me that nobody can live your life for you. Do what you want. But I was also told again and again, “Don’t be selfish.” Being selfish and being a Yankee were bad—and synonymous. (Mother reveled in having been born in Carroll County, Maryland.) Since children are naturally selfish, I had this lesson banged into my head every hour on the hour, but at the same time Mother granted me a healthy dose of skepticism about received wisdom.

  It pained her, however, that I was not a carbon copy of herself. I hated crinolines. I hated smocked dresses. I hated dainty shoes. She naively thought I would like everything that she liked. I failed dismally. She could take apart a clock and put it back together, making it run. Her incredible mechanical sense extended to cars, even tractors. I listened and watched. I copied her but I didn’t love the things she loved.

  Social gatherings were Mother’s metier. I preferred solitude or being with animals, although I got along with other children quite well.

  She loved popular music. The only music I liked as a child was the music I heard in church, especially the Bach played on the stupendous organ at Christ Lutheran. I first heard a Gregorian chant with Aunt Mimi. Somehow I knew that was my music.

  Later, both Mom and I liked Patsy Cline. We both liked hot-fudge sundaes. She liked Airedales and Chow Chows. I liked gun dogs and hounds. We both loved, to the point of silliness, cats.

  But the older I grew, the sharper the differences were between us. I could only be myself. Mother’s instinctual rebelliousness helped her accept somewhat that I was profoundly different from her, but underneath she feared I would never be her child; I would always be Juliann’s baby. Why she did not brood as much about my natural father, I don’t know. She never mentioned him. It was my natural mother she feared.

  Aunt Mimi, during their worst fights, would taunt Mom by telling her, “You’ll never be a true mother because you didn’t give birth. I knew my children in the womb. That’s why we’re so close.”

  Close, hell. Aunt Mimi kept them on a tight leash and a choke collar.

  But this hurt Mother, and in turn she often hurt me either by lashing out at whatever I did wrong, like spilling a glass of milk, or in other ways, those quiet withdrawals that children feel acutely but are unable to address.

  The older I got, the more Mother pulled away from me. I expect this is natural. All animals push away their young, but by the time I was in kindergarten I knew in a nonverbal way, though I couldn’t explain it, that I was on my own where she was concerned.

  We always shared a love of color, a vibrant sense of humor and a true passion for horses.

  I was the horse of a different color.

  6

  Devil Weed

  It’s fashionable to decry the horrors of tobacco. I say, thank God for nicotine. Mother was so highly strung that without her measured doses of the drug, she’d probably have killed me.

  But it couldn’t be just any cigarette, only a Chesterfield. Not Lucky Strike or Camel or Viceroy or even Pall Mall. Not those expensive Dunhill brands or Gauloises in light blue packs. Old Gold with the dancing cigarette pack and little matchbook was nixed by Juts the Judge of All Things Tobacco.

  The red tip of her Virginia leaf cigarette would glow as she inhaled, then exhaled with a sigh of gratification. When she worked, the cigarette hung out of the corner of her mouth like a gun moll’s. When the 6:30 A.M. call or visit from Aunt Mimi came, the cigarette proved as indispensable as the gossip. Aunt Mimi didn’t smoke, but then her engine didn’t run as hot as Mom’s. Mother would stride through Hanover Square or trot under the Bromo-Seltzer tower in Baltimore, pointing out the sights with her lit cigarette. No lady of the past could have used her fan as slyly as Mom used her cigarette. It was her prize, her prop and her one-woman party.

  She started smoking at twelve because she wanted to seem mature. She continued smoking but I don’t think she was ever fully mature.

  And the damnedest thing is her lungs held out; she never coughed, and she got her teeth cleaned frequently, so they didn’t yellow. Her fingers evidenced signs of nicotine use, but that was about it. To picture Mother you have to picture that regular-size, unfiltered Chesterfield held in whichever hand was supplying the emphasis to her uncharitable and screamingly funny conversation. She referred to the Pope as His Assholiness. She mocked her sister’s intermittently sincere attacks of Catholicism by dubbing her Divergent Mary. She had another friend, Mary Baer, a lovely lady who daily fought the battle of the bulge and lost; she was Mary of the Straining Girdle. These nicknames and descriptions would enliven her chat like cayenne. You had to laugh, even when you didn’t want to; even when you were the butt of her observations, you had to laugh.

  Being less than perfect myself—a sin as far as Mother was concerned, since I was here to reflect her glory—I might hear myself called “the Ill” for illegitimate. If a tender maternal chord twanged, I was “kid.” Since I flew around with as much energy as Mom, she called me “Bumblebee,” which became “Bee,” which became “To Be” by her more erudite friends, and finally “Buzzer,”

  When Mickey and I appeared, in tandem as usual, she’d say, “The Mick and the Buzzer are gracing us with their unclean presence.” Usually I’d torn my shirt, scuffed a knee or decorated myself in the freshest dirt of the day. By age five I’d driven the woman half nuts because if an object could be crawled under or climbed up to the tippy-top, I did it. One day when I jumped onto the roof from the maple tree next to the house, Mother heard the thump and came outside, Aunt Mimi in tow, the kitchen radio playing “Those dear hearts and gentle people who live and love in my hometown.”

  Aunt Mimi, never one to miss a dramatic moment, cried, “She’ll break her neck.” She listed the other breakage possibilities as well.

  Mother pointed her cigarette at me, the tiny orange glow pulsating. “Even the cat has sense enough to stay in the tree.”

  He did, too.

  A lengthy discussion erupted between the two sisters as to the cost of medical attention should I break any bones. Mother, however, shrugged and headed back for the kitchen.

  I was perched at the edge of the roof, glad to be out of her reach but worried about getting down.

  “Juts, aren’t you going to do something?�
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  “Let her think about it.” Mother returned to her red-painted kitchen for yet another cup of coffee.

  I did think about it. I couldn’t jump back to the tree because the tree limb had bounced back up after I dropped onto the roof. Mickey stared at me with eyes as big as eight balls. Fat lot of help he was.

  I was stuck and the day glistened with heat. I was really on that roof because my cousin died that year.

  Although only five, I would enter first grade that fall. Since I would turn six just before the first of the year, they’d let me slide in. My cousin was a year older than I was but he seemed younger because he was small. I don’t recall him being in school. Maybe he was always sick.

  The adults shielded all of us kids as best they could, but muscular dystrophy resists being tidied up. I wasn’t close to him. He was my true cousin, being born to my natural mother’s sister, Betts, but I’d seen him only a few times and when I did he was weak. Now don’t for a minute think that I cared that he was sickly. If a kid couldn’t play with me, I got bored and left. But when he died I looked at his small casket. It was just my size. I’d never seen adults so distraught. Like a seeping leak in a cracked mug, the enormity of death was leaking all over my pea brain. I wasn’t safe. Whatever this was, it was so awful that some of the relatives couldn’t walk. They sat, head in hands, and sobbed.

  Not only was I not the center of the universe that day, I could do little to make anyone happy. And I had done nothing to delight my cousin. The only reason I prayed for him when I went to bed at night was because Mother made me include him. At the funeral a sliver of light, a click in the mind, a new and disturbing idea seized me. Dying young, bad as that was, wasn’t as awful as knowing I’d been irresponsible and selfish.

  People underestimate children. They can understand moral principles early. I understood that I had not tried in even the smallest fashion to alleviate his suffering or to include him in my games. I hated myself.