“She found that fast,” observed Mother.
“How many do you think she’ll have?” I asked.
“Five or six is about usual,” said Winnie.
“Your father is going to have a heart attack if we have six kittens around the house. We’ll have to find someone to take them.”
“Mama, no! I want them.”
“Sweetheart, we aren’t keeping all of those kittens. You may pick out one, but once they’re weaned, we’ve got to find the others a home.”
“Look, there’s another one!” I said as another sack twisted its way out. So involved was I with watching the births that I didn’t really let Mother’s words about giving away the kittens sink in.
(I should have.)
“Wonder if it’s as painful for her to deliver kittens as it is for us to deliver babies,” mused Winnie.
“Do you know about childbirth?” asked Mother, her voice spiked with alarm. “I mean, firsthand?”
“Yes, yes I do. Last year I had me a little boy. Named him Luke after the Gospels. My husband is pastor at Sweetwater Church of the Fallen and Redeemed, out in Loganville, so we knew we’d go with a biblical name.”
“You had a baby—with your husband?” asked Mother.
“We baptized him in the church. Swore we’d do our best to raise him in the name of Jesus.”
Gray-Gray pushed out another baby, while the other three stayed attached to her nipples.
“Isn’t that the truth about being a mother,” said Winnie, looking at the cat covered in nursing kittens. “Afterwards your body is never again your own.”
Carefully, Mother made her way out from underneath the table, stood, and walked to the little desk by the back door where the telephone and her pocketbook were kept. She fished around inside her pocketbook, looking for her wallet. When she found it she pulled three twenty-dollar bills out of it.
“Here,” she said, walking back across the room, the hand that held the bills shaking slightly. “Take this. There’s more upstairs, hidden away. There’s more than a thousand dollars up there. You can have it all, just take it and use it to raise your boy. Just take it and leave us alone, all right?”
Mother had money hidden somewhere upstairs? I wondered where she kept it.
Winnie worked her way out from under the table in a crouch. She rose, standing beside Mother, leaving me alone under the table with Gray-Gray, her four offspring sucking away, another baby dropping from her.
Winnie held her palm out in front of her. She looked like a crossing guard stopping traffic so that the kindergartners can waddle by.
“I don’t want your money,” she said. “Lord no. I’m not here to take anything from you. I’ve already done too much of that. I’m here to tell you how sorry I am.”
I was busy trying to watch both Mother and the cat, when without warning, Gray-Gray jumped up and walked to the cardboard box that Mamie had left in the corner of the kitchen, knocking her kittens off her chest, leaving them in a blind, hungry jumble.
Gray-Gray circled the outside of the box and then jumped inside it. Once inside she turned around two times and then jumped back out. She returned to where her kittens lay and grabbed one by its neck with her teeth.
“Mommy!” I cried, terrified that Gray-Gray was trying to kill her baby.
Mother turned to look at Gray-Gray, who was now carrying the kitten to the box, looking much the same as when she killed a mouse and carried it in her mouth to eat it on our front porch.
“Don’t worry,” said Winnie. “That’s just how mama cats carry their young.”
It bothered me that Winnie answered for Mother, almost as much as it bothered me to see how rough Gray-Gray was with her newborn baby. That didn’t seem like the sweet Gray-Gray I knew. After dropping the first kitty into the box, she returned to the pile of kittens and grabbed another by its neck.
Winnie reached into the pocket of her tan skirt and pulled out a small velvet bag. “My husband and I, we sold that house in Virginia Highlands. He’s a preacher, after all, and it was a house born of sin. We donated most of the money from the sale to our church, though I held on to a little of it. I was so scared of being back where I was when I was young, of not having a dime to my name. What I didn’t realize was, I had something—I have something. I have Jesus Christ and by holding on to that money I was holding on to my past life, before I was born again through his blood. And if I was holding on to my past life, then I was holding on to my past sin.”
Winnie handed Mother the small velvet bag. “I bought this for you,” she said.
I watched as Mother pulled out a small velvet board with a chain of gold looped around it.
“You bought it with money you held on to from the house?” asked Mother.
Winnie nodded.
Mother unwrapped the chain from the cardboard. Dangling from its end was a pendant shaped like the letter A. It looked like the pancake letter that Mother had made for me that morning, except of course that it was Mother’s initial and not my own dangling from the end of the chain, and it was delicate and gold.
“It’s the scarlet letter, but reversed,” said Mother, her voice so soft that I could barely hear her.
“I know I can’t make up for what I did,” said Winnie.
“Ernie is going to have to look at this every day, isn’t he?” mused Mother.
Clasping each end of the necklace, Mother brought the chain around her neck. She tried to fasten the ends together, but her fingers fumbled with the tiny lock.
“Would you help me?” she asked Winnie.
She turned so that her back was facing Winnie. Winnie took the ends out of Mother’s hands and depressed the tiny latch that opened the lock. After slipping the ring into the lock she released the latch. The necklace hung taut from Mother’s neck, the tiny A resting in the indentation between her collarbones.
That evening when Daddy came home from work, Mother showed him the necklace and told him who gave it to her. Daddy stiffened and then told her to take it off, that it looked cheap. But then Mother flipped the pendant around and showed him what was stamped on the back: 18 karat gold.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Trouble
(Louise, Spring 2001)
Sometimes I wish Caroline attended public school. Surely if she were at Grady I would not have to interrupt my afternoon to come in and talk about her lack of scholastic effort or her chronic tardiness or her blatant disregard of the school dress code or whatever it is they are calling me in about this time. Lord knows Caroline is a handful, but sometimes I think Coventry makes too big a deal over relatively minor infractions. Like the time last week when they made Caroline call me from Dean Brown’s office to tell me that if she was late one more time she would have to go in front of the disciplinary committee.
Frankly, now that she has her acceptance to Juilliard, I don’t really care how many tardies she has. And it being the spring of her senior year, I’m not really sure why Coventry cares anymore either.
But still, off I go to meet with the dean of the school, Miss Brown. This really is inconvenient. There are no groceries in the house, I have a bag full of John Henry’s dirty shirts to take to the cleaners, and now I won’t be there when Charles gets home from school to make him a snack. Of course I know he’s thirteen years old and is perfectly capable of getting the bag of Chips Ahoy out of the pantry himself, but I take pleasure in feeding my son, in being with my son. There has always been such a marked ease in my relationship with Charles. I suppose it’s that he accepts me so completely as his mother, his nurturer and caregiver and natural authority figure. Caroline resists my authority at all costs. She put a bumper sticker on the back of her car that said so much. “Question Authority,” it reads, and when I saw it I had to laugh. Question authority she certainly does.
THE TRAFFIC IS not too bad getting to Coventry, and so twenty minutes after leaving my house I pull into the back gates of the school. The campus is enormous, as big as a college. I pass six tennis courts o
n my way to what used to be the Girls’ School, where Caroline and Dean Brown are waiting. On my way up the front steps of Robinson Hall, I pass Amanda, who used to be one of Caroline’s good friends.
“Hey there, Amanda,” I say.
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Parker,” she says. She looks away from me when I try to make eye contact. She must be embarrassed that I know that she and Caroline had a falling out.
I walk through the hall filled with beige lockers. It is narrow and smells faintly of sweat. The lockers seem too small to belong to gangly teenagers. There is a cluster of girls sitting in a circle on the floor, holding a copy of the school newspaper and laughing like crazy. I don’t know any of the girls. From what I can tell, Caroline has always sort of held herself above her classmates. Which is the opposite of how I was. I remember how carefully I would get ready in the morning before high school, how I would curl my hair under with a hot iron and practice my smiles in the bathroom mirror. I had three different kinds: one for girls (confident and sure), one for boys (mysterious), and one for teachers (quick and no-nonsense).
I’m not supposed to meet with Miss Brown until four o’clock, and it’s only three fifty. I pop into the girls’ bathroom to freshen up a little. Standing in front of the mirror I reapply my lipstick, blotting it with one of the brown paper towels from the dispenser.
Okay. Time to face the music. It’s funny, isn’t it, how having a delinquent daughter makes me feel like I’m the one in trouble.
I walk into the reception area of Miss Brown’s office and am greeted by a young girl seated behind a large desk with a phone, a computer, and various boxes for dropping off forms. Surely this girl is a student. A prefect.
“I’m Louise Parker. I’m here to see Dean Brown.”
A look flashes across the girl’s face, a look that makes me wonder if I have lipstick on my teeth. When she turns to knock on Miss Brown’s office door, I slide my finger quickly across my teeth, hoping to wipe off any errant color.
Miss Brown opens the door just enough to stick her head through.
“Yes, Samantha?” she says. You can tell that she is a formidable woman just by the way she styles her hair. It is dark and cut short, winged on the side and held perfectly in place with hairspray. Aqua Net, I’d be willing to bet.
“Hello,” I say, holding my hand up to give a little wave. “Samantha was just letting you know I’m here.”
“That’s right, Miss Brown,” says the girl.
“Thank you, Samantha. And hello, Mrs. Parker. I appreciate your coming on such short notice.”
She has the clipped accent of a New Englander. She opens the door just wide enough to let me squeeze in.
Her office is a big room, large enough to hold a desk with a computer and two sofas that make an L, separated by what looks to be a good-quality antique end table with a porcelain lamp on it. Caroline is sitting on the sofa nearest to me. Her shoulders are hunched and when she looks up I can see that she has been crying.
“Hello,” I say.
“Hi,” she says. Her voice is meek.
“Mrs. Parker, sit down, please,” says Miss Brown. I sit next to Caroline on the sofa. She scoots over a little to her left to give me more room.
“Let me start by telling you how upset we feel about this situation,” Miss Brown begins. “Of course Caroline is responsible for her own actions, but that doesn’t mean that we aren’t all grieved by what happened.”
Caroline’s posture is terrible: shoulders slumped, eyes trained on the floor.
“Again, our grief does little in the way of rectifying this matter.”
I am trying to nod and look concerned, but I am utterly confused as to what is going on. And Miss Brown is certainly acting elusive; she sits on the far end of the other sofa and she, same as Caroline, refuses to make eye contact.
I put my hand on Caroline’s leg, hoping to convey by my touch that I am on her side. At least, I think I am. I certainly don’t care much for Miss Brown’s manner.
“Sweetheart, what happened?”
Caroline looks at me, finally, her eyelashes wet from crying. “Frederick and I…someone saw us,” she says. And then she starts crying again, crying and sniffing. I pull a travel pack of Kleenex out of my purse and hand it to her.
Oh dear. I wonder if I should pretend not to know what she is talking about. It would look better, I’m sure, if I were in the dark about their relationship. I try to give Miss Brown my most quizzical expression.
“Mrs. Parker, this is a difficult thing to tell you, but we found your daughter in a quite compromised position with Mr. Staunton. Frederick Staunton.”
Lord knows what a compromised position means to this woman. Did she catch them kissing or did she catch them having sex? I can’t really tell.
“Well,” I say, “I’m sorry to hear that.” After a minute I add, “Sorry and, well, shocked. I hadn’t realized that their academic relationship had taken on a…romantic element.”
“Romantic is a generous word. I think inappropriate is more fitting. Mr. Staunton will be asked to resign immediately, of course.”
“Oh,” I say, wishing John Henry was here. He always knows exactly what to say and exactly what not to say in these situations. He knows how not to become legally embroiled.
“We’ve never had any…any problem of this nature arise before,” she says, and the naughty little girl in me snickers at her word choice: arise. “We are unsure yet what the disciplinary action against Caroline will be. We consider this, of course, a grave offense.”
I nod, wondering if it’s possible for them to kick her out over this. And then I think, If they try to, we’ll sue.
“And of course I’m sure that Coventry will decide it has an ethical responsibility to inform all the colleges that Caroline has received acceptances from about this situation.”
“But she’s going to acting school,” I say. “I mean, we’re all very upset about this, of course, but I hardly see the point of informing a drama school about a dramatic situation. Surely they’re used to such things.”
Caroline gives me a shy half smile. She looks so wounded and small sitting here. Of course, perhaps she’s just acting contrite in the hopes that Dean Brown will go easy on her, but if she is acting she’s doing such a good job of it that I feel large next to her, large and in charge and wanting to protect my girl from this uptight woman who probably never got caught doing anything bad in her life because she didn’t have anybody to do bad things with.
“Miss Brown, I don’t mean to tell you how to run your school, but I hope you give it some serious thought before informing Juilliard,” I say. “My husband is a lawyer. Perhaps we should check with him first to see if there is any legal precedent for such an action.”
My heart is beating fast. I hope that we are able to end this meeting quickly so I don’t cry in front of this woman. I always cry after confrontations. Especially when I speak my mind.
Miss Brown’s voice becomes—incredibly—even more clipped. “We are each responsible for our own actions,” she says. “Caroline must face the consequences of her decision to engage in such inappropriate behavior.”
I grab my bag and stand. “Well, Caroline and I have a lot to talk about, obviously,” I say. “Thank you for calling this distressing matter to my attention. Come on, Caroline.”
Caroline stands. I walk toward the door but turn to face Miss Brown before I exit her office. “Perhaps you should talk things over with the headmaster, with Dr. Johnson, before making any concrete decisions about informing Juilliard,” I say. “My mother-in-law is an extremely generous donor at Coventry, and I would hate for the school to lose her contribution over something Caroline did.”
“Our donors are well aware of the moral fiber of this school,” says Miss Brown. “They have given in the past and continue to give now because of Coventry’s explicit mission to raise boys and girls of integrity and faith. It is a sad time when a student veers so far from our mission, Mrs. Parker. I’m sure it is upsetting
to you.”
Bitch.
I’m sorry. I don’t like to use that word but there is no denying it. This woman is a Grade A bitch and if I weren’t better raised I would tell her that to her face.
“Is Caroline to be in class tomorrow morning?” I ask.
Caroline shoots me a pleading look but I ignore it. Of course she won’t want to go to school tomorrow but she must. Absolutely. There is truth to the adage about getting back on the horse once you have been bucked.
“Caroline should continue on as a student until we have decided officially what the school’s action will be.”
“Thank you,” I say. “She’ll be there.”
We walk through the nearly empty hall; Caroline keeps her gaze trained to the floor as if she were a murderer being led through a crowd of her victim’s family.
“You are going to wind up an old lady with a humpback if you keep walking that way,” I say.
“That’s what you’re worried about? My posture?”
I can’t help it, I laugh. I know I should be distraught over the upcoming scandal. I know I should be furious with my daughter for being so reckless with her relationship with Frederick (were they caught on campus?), but none of it seems that serious. Caroline is only months away from starting Juilliard, Frederick is a sweetheart, and I—I just don’t have it in me to get too worked up over this.
ONCE WE ARE in the car with the doors closed and the windows rolled up, I ask her what “compromised” position she and Frederick were found in.
She shakes her head. “I can’t tell you,” she says.
Good Lord. As if we’re not going to learn about it. “Should I just call Frederick and ask him?”
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